The beautiful brunette Ukrainian Karina Smirnoff is a professional and world champion dancer, and now a reality television star from ABC's hit series, Dancing with the Stars.

Having previously gone by the names Karyna Kylkova, Karyna Smirnoff, and Karyna Smirnova, the dancer was born on March 13, 1978, near Kiev, Ukraine. As a child, Smirnoff studied ballet, gymnastics, aerobics, figure skating, piano, and ballroom dancing—and ended up claiming ballroom dancing as the activity of her choice. She and her family moved from the Ukraine to the U.S. when she was twelve years old.

Karina quickly rose to international fame in the dancing world, becoming a five-time U.S. National Champion, as well as Asian Open Champion and World Trophy Champion. She has had a number of different dance partners, including Paul Killick and Louis Van Amstel, who also participated in Dancing with the Stars. Her most notable dance partner is Slavik Kryklyvyy, with whom she acquired several wins and titles, and created a series of dance instruction videos. Smirnoff and Kryklyvyy ended their dancing partnership in September 2005, and now she is dancing with Dmitri Timokhin.

Her fame grew even greater when she joined the ranks of reality television in the third, and most recent, season of ABC's Dancing with the Stars, as the partner of celebrity Mario Lopez. Karina is reportedly dating Lopez, who is most remembered as AC Slater from the hit sitcom Saved by the Bell, alongside Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Dustin Diamond, Tiffani Thiessen, and Elizabeth Berkley. Smirnoff and Lopez eventually became Dancing with the Stars' third season's runners-up, with pair Emmitt Smith and Cheryl Burke taking the win.

Besides her stint on Dancing with the Stars, Smirnoff made an appearance as a pouty dance partner, on the acclaimed dramatic romantic comedy Shall We Dance in 2004, which starred Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, and Jennifer Lopez. Smirnoff, along with Kryklyvyy, actually choreographed the tango in Shall We Dance, where Lopez's character gives Gere's character a private, very intense and sweaty late-night dance lesson.

Interestingly, Smirnoff is a graduate of Fordham University, where she studied information system programming as well as economics, with a specialization in information system management—a far cry from dancing, to say the least. Even while studying information system programming and economics, Smirnoff was reportedly interested in attending law school.

Smirnoff was recently the project manager of "Day & Night", the international professional ballroom dancing event put on by Tornado Dance and held on November 18, 2006. Karina brought 'N Sync member and actor JC Chasez to the event as her date.